


A Fire In Many Forms

by Setari



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Asexual Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 08:24:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2614982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setari/pseuds/Setari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people think Tony Stark is the dangerous one. He's the flash, the bang, the flare of the limelight. He's well known to be ruthless and single-minded on his path to bloody revenge. Smart people are very wary of crossing Tony Stark, but even the best of them don't think to look twice at Pepper Potts. They think her soft and gentle; tame.</p><p>Loki knows better. He knows you can't tame fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fire In Many Forms

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Vision in Blue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/460599) by [icarus_chained](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained). 



She asked him to dance. Not, precisely, the done thing by the unspoken rules of the culture, but they both knew he would not ask her. That went against a different set of rules they both valued far more highly. He accepted, led her out onto the dance floor and curled a proprietous hand around her waist; not to high, not too low. His other hand held hers, gentle but firm, and they danced. They drew everyone’s eye, and not because they looked stunning, although they did. Her with her strawberry-blonde locks like something out of a fairytale, spilling over shoulders clad in glittering silver-blue. And him, with his dark suit, eyes like poison and a smile that could cut through steel. Both of them tall and graceful and fair; something a little otherworldly.

Their looks would have drawn stares anywhere, but here there wasn’t admiration in those eyes, but fear. They knew those oh-so-important rules just as well as Loki did. No one, not the son of God himself, touched Stark’s woman. Not if they valued their sanity or their lives. Loki ignored them, ignored the jealousy underlying some of the accusatory gazes, even though they rankled. Even though they woke something vicious and vengeful inside him.

Instead, he watched her. And she watched him watching her, and there was something calculative in her gaze. Something that reminded Loki – not that he needed to be reminded – that despite how she seemed for all the world like Stark’s eye-candy, there was fire and steel in this woman’s soul. That she was not Stark’s toy, but his equal, and she had earned that. She had earned every hard-won bloody inch of it.

After half the dance was already done, Pepper finally spoke. Finally, Loki began to get an idea of what this charade was about. “You said you could relate.” She mused, sounding for all the world like they were talking about the weather. Loki didn’t need anything more, though, to know precisely what she was talking about.

* * *

_She found him at the bar. The club was full, a growing cloud of cigar smoke hazing the air and making everything feel slightly unreal. She came right up to him, took the stool next to him, and didn’t have to order for her martini to be made up and given to her. She was known here. It was, after all, Stark’s club. “Thank you” were the words she chose to open with._

_Loki didn’t bother to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. He merely dipped his head in acknowledgement of her thanks, and continued sipping his drink. She didn’t speak again for a long time, but he could feel her eyes on him. Waiting. He thought he knew what she was waiting for, but if he was right, she was going to be waiting a very, very long time._

_“I suppose,” she continued finally, leaning over the bar a little, bringing herself closer to him so that she could speak quieter to avoid the risk of being overheard, “mere words seem a little insincere to a man like you.”_

_Loki turned his head a little, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, and dipped his head again, eyebrow arching to show his acknowledgement. There was, after all, truth to her statement, even if that truth was misleading. He was a wordsmith, a spinner of tales, gifted with a silver tongue and a razor sharp wit. Lies were his trade; words held very little value to a man like him._

_“So I suppose I should be asking you what you want in return?” Pepper finally asked._

_And Loki smiled. It was not an entirely pleasant smile, but it didn’t cut like most of his usual repertoire. More darkness than sharp edges showed through in this smile. Softer, like smoke and poison and the drawing of it from old wounds. “I already have what I want.” He informed her, tipping his glass to swirl the liquid inside. Satisfaction. His reward had lain in the satisfaction of watching the scum of the earth drive himself to ruin under Loki’s careful guidance. He wondered, idly, how Pepper had seen his signature in the ruination of Aldrich Killian._

_“What is that?” Pepper asked, and there was something sharp in her tone. Something edged. Oh, Loki knew that tone. It spoke of broken glass beneath his bare feet and a knife waiting to be plunged between his ribs. He liked that tone on her. It showed the truth behind the lie that was her fragile, unassuming exterior._

_“You don’t think I gave Mr Killian’s money to_ charity _, do you?” Loki asked, and it was a lie. Not the words. No, the words themselves were true. He had not given Killian’s money to charity. It was all sitting safe, invested piecemeal in places Loki knew would double their value in the next five years. After all, he would have a hand in it. But the lie, oh the lie, so cleverly crafted, was that he had not done it for the money. Vicious vengeance had bean his goal. Had been his reward._

_Pepper’s gratitude was a bonus he had not dared to hope for._

_“No, I suppose not.” Pepper agreed slowly. Thoughtfully. Loki looked at her slantwise, one eyebrow sliding up in mocking question, wondering at the doubt in her tone. Surely she had not heard the lie? Even a woman as sharp as her – and Loki was not fool enough to think she wasn’t – should not have been able to find it. “But I’ve never known a man like you not take advantage of a debt owed. And I don’t believe that it was coincidence that you ruined Killian only a few short weeks after you prevented him from assaulting me.” Pepper pointed out._

_Sharp as a tack, Loki thought with a little thrill. “No,” he agreed idly, “it wasn’t.”_

_Pepper sighed softly, a weary sort of satisfaction. She had been proved right – or she thought she had – but she hadn’t wanted to be. “Then I’ll ask you again; what do you want from me?” She pressed._

_Loki finally turned to face her, head tilted to consider her through cold eyes. “Miss Potts, do you think me a fool?” He asked mildly._

_“Not in the slightest.” Pepper answered without missing a beat, tone flat._

_Loki smirked, and this one did have edges, though blunted ones. Ones designed to test rather than wound. She did not flinch. She only hardened. “No one with an ounce of common sense dares to_ desire _anything of you, Miss Potts. I dare say if anyone tried to exploit you over something like that, it would not get them very far.”_

_Some of the steel eased from her bearing, replaced with confusion. She studied him like he was a puzzle, and she was beginning to put him together but was still a long way off from seeing the whole picture. It made something inside Loki squirm, and he wasn’t sure if it was in fear of her discovering more truths about him, or in anticipation of the same. “Then a favour owed, rather than blackmail?” She asked, and this time her tone was almost friendly._

_“No.” Loki corrected, matching her tone and adding something even more gentle. At her deepening confusion, he smiled as he slid off his stool to stand before her. “I ask no favours, nor ransom for information kept safe.”_

_Pepper studied him carefully, and Loki could see the puzzle pieces struggling to find homes behind her eyes. “Then why did you do it?” She asked._

_“Perhaps you should consider, Miss Potts,” Loki suggested, claiming one of her delicate hands in his own long-fingered one and holding lightly, fingers to her palm and wrist, to feel the sudden spike in her pulse, “that just maybe I can relate.” And with that, he bowed over her hand, pressed a chaste kiss to the back of it, and left._

* * *

“I did.” Loki confirmed, the remembering having only taken up a fraction of his attention. Returning it all to Pepper came easily. “What of it?” He wondered if he had not, perhaps, made a mistake, confiding that particular vulnerability to Pepper, but the gentleness in her eyes was not a lie. It wasn’t pity either, nor would it ever be. Not from her, who knew his shame intimately and could never drive the knife deeper that way.

Pepper took a moment to answer, choosing her words with care. “What happened to them?” She asked finally.

Had Loki not been used to masking everything, that question, so blunt for all that she had obviously taken her time to pick it carefully, would have sent him stumbling. As it was, he merely stiffened ever so slightly and let her see the sharpening, hardening of his gaze. Razorblades waiting to cut from behind pools of poison. “Why do you ask?” He returned, without answering. He wasn’t sure he could, under such frank scrutiny. It was strangely disarming, her honesty.

He knew, of course, as a wordsmith, that the truth could be just as dangerous as the perfect lie, but her utilisation of it was flawless and unique, and it quite took his breath away. He was not ashamed to admit that he was just as afraid of her as he was of Stark. And just as awed and enamoured, too. Dangerous things, dangerous emotions, all three. Much like the three of them, in truth.

“Because I have a feeling you know my answer to the same.” Pepper replied simply, which was the truth. It was the unspoken knowledge, the unspoken rule. No one touched Pepper Potts. Stark had made the consequences for doing so quite blatant, with his surrogate father’s head on a pike, and the same incendiary rage in his eyes that Loki knew intimately. That howling inferno just waiting to be unleashed on the next foolish soul to cross him. They were all of them forged in flames, they three. If Loki was a wildfire, a chaotic force of nature, and Stark a white-hot forge to craft the deadliest of weapons, then Pepper was the hearth-fire. She offered warmth and sanctuary from the night, drew people in out of the cold, and burned their flesh clean off if they ventured too close.

Loki found that despite all his misgivings, for all that he knew he was venturing too close, he wanted to meet her honesty with honesty of his own. “One, I destroyed with my own hand.” He told her softly, moving closer to speak low. He was nearly pressed against her, but she didn’t tense, she didn’t flinch, and her trust was more disarming than her honesty. “One, their downfall I orchestrated, and I watched them _burn_ …” He trailed off, words sticking in his throat, bitten back out of sheer force of habit; that one secret it was imperative he keep. For now.

“And the last?” Pepper asked, poignant enough that Loki couldn’t help the wary suspicion that rose within him. She smiled at him; a bitter, knowing little thing. “I can see their ghost in your eyes, sometimes.” She told him, just as low and soft and sincere as his own words had been. “They haunt you from too close to be dead or ashes.”

To be so shrewd, to see so much, and still be able to trust one such as Loki, it left him flayed and laid bare for her. It hurt, but it was exquisite pain and he didn’t think he could give it up; the metaphorical scalpel she wielded with such finesse, cutting him open and prying out his secrets like they belonged to her. Maybe they did. “…They did not harm me.” He said, finally. Not a lie, but not the truth, and all the more painfully true for it.

Pepper – wonderful, impossible Pepper – understood. “They stood by and watched.” She concluded, and there was the steel. Sharp and glittering and unyielding, forged in flames into a stiletto blade; a knife waiting to be slid painlessly between ribs, so the victim only noticed the wound when it pierced their heart. Loki had met his match for verbally eviscerating people in Pepper Potts, and he was enraptured.

There was no verbal answer Loki could give that would be more eloquent than his silence, so he let the quiet speak for him. He met her gaze and waited, let the confirmation form in the air between them, watched as she took notice. She took it in and let it shatter the careful hold she kept on the inferno within her, just for a moment, before she tucked it away inside, as fuel to feed the fire that burned there.

Then she drew her composure back up around her like a cloak, breathing carefully to tamp down the burning. “I would repay you.” She informed him, and Loki stiffened.

“It was a gift.” He told her, wary. He would not make a trade of this. Not of this, so raw and aching in both of them. He had thought she understood, but he simply did not know how to take her pronouncement.

“Then this is my gratitude,” Pepper replied, and Loki began to understand, began to soften as she continued, “a gift in return for a gift. Not because I feel indebted, or because I wish to undermine the value of a gift so freely given. But because I understand it’s value, because I appreciate everything it meant, and because I want to give you the peace you have given me. Because I believe you deserve to have it.”

Those words were the stiletto. It drove straight between his ribs and cleanly pierced his heart. He could feel the fresh wound bleeding out into him, but it wasn’t bleeding precious lifeblood. This wound was kinder. Cleansing. He was bleeding poison, the oozing black that stained his every waking moment. The shame that he had never shared, had known he would never be able to share. And yet, he hadn’t needed to, because here she was, and she didn’t need to be pointed to it, to have it revealed to her to know it was there. She knew exactly where to cut to spill poisonous self-loathing instead of the life that kept him going.

She saw the shattering. There was no way she couldn’t have. The fractures showed as clearly in his eyes as he felt them in his chest. She pressed in closer, their bodies flush, but there was no sensuality to it. Not between them, long grown too used to the poison of such things. It was all comfort. A solid, warm presence, to tell him she was there. She understood. “Give me a name.” She whispered, all fierce intent and burning rage.

Loki let out a breath that shuddered faintly against his will. “And if I give you this name, what then?” He asked, matching his pitch to hers, voice so quiet only she could hear.

She met his gaze, and did not flinch from the maelstrom behind them. Did not retreat from the raging howling blackness inside that was smaller, now, but not gone. Likely never gone. “Then,” she said with careful deliberation, “I will aim the world’s most deadly weapon at them, and find a nice seat for you and me from which to watch him raze them to the ground.”

Loki found himself _wanting_. There was a part of him that still wanted to execute his vengeance himself, but he also knew that if he was close enough to inflict that damage, the same would be dealt to him in return. Old wounds would reopen, and he did not know if he could survive that pain a second time. And the idea of watching Stark blaze so brilliantly on _his behalf_ … Oh, what a sight that would be. What a _thrill_.

Still, it would never do to be too hasty, and there were still questions Loki had. Fears that needed assuaging. “And if he should fail?” Loki asked, because he had to. He was not yet so enamoured that he would risk all on a hope.

“No one need know you gave us the name.” Pepper replied.

She knew him too well, could read him far too easily. Loki couldn’t bring himself to care. It was the most beautiful thing he could ever have been given, all the more flawless for having been given freely and without coercion. He could not deny her. Not even if courting the inferno in her – and in Stark – left him burned and broken. It would be worth it. So very, very worth it.

He pulled her in, pressing her closer than ever, bending over her and surrounding her to press his lips against her ear. She did not tense. She did not flinch. She stepped into his embrace willingly, and welcomed him in turn. “Odin.” He breathed, the word drawn out of him like poison from a snake bite.

Then he stepped back, aware of all the eyes on them, the jealous, covetous eyes on both Pepper and himself. The eyes of Banner, who had been the one to warn him of what Stark would do if he approached Pepper. The eyes of Stark himself, Loki realised as he caught a glimpse of the man as he drew back, eyes burning as he wove through the crowd towards them.

He was distracted from the approaching confrontation when Pepper slid her hand up from his shoulder to his neck and pulled him down as she stretched up. He had a single moment to widen his eyes in surprise, before her lips pressed against his. Not sensual, not between them. Comfort, and assurance. Trust. It broke him open and forged him anew. Sent him reeling only to stabilise foundations he hadn’t known were fractured. Tore him open in order to burn out the infections beneath his skin.

* * *

He left her on the dance floor. Tony wasn’t sure if he felt more pain or rage at this betrayal. He knew it had been foolish to grow as attached as he had to Loki, who was just as dangerous as Tony himself, if not more so. But he’d thought Loki had _known_ that Pepper was Off Limits. That Tony would _destroy_ anyone who touched her.

“Pepper, are you alright?” He demanded, coming up and slinging a possessive arm around her waist. It wasn’t, as it would appear to the casual viewer, a mark of romantic attachment or jealousy. It was a gesture of comfort and protection. As best he could convey it, anyway.

“I’m perfectly fine, Tony.” Pepper assured him, soothing and gentle, turning to him with a smile that broke his heart. After everything she’d been through, she shouldn’t have to smile serenely like that after- _that_.

Thinking of it woke something dark in Tony’s chest; something dark and vicious and all-consuming. His lip curled in a snarl. “I’m going to-”

“Keep him.” Pepper finished for him, interrupting both words and thought. Emotions, too, if he was going to be honest. Everything ground to a stop in incomprehension, and he stared at her, waiting for the explanation. “We’re going to keep him.” Pepper informed him, in a tone that brooked no argument, not even from him. Her certainty tilted his world on it’s axis, twisted his assumptions until they broke, and revealed the truth. She was _fine_ , not shattered and shaking and scrambling for control in the wake of the lack of it. She was safe, and she was whole, and she was perfectly in control.

“We are?” He asked, not in doubt. What Pepper wanted, Pepper got. Always. But he was confused as to _why_ she wanted this thing in particular. Confused, but not unhappy. Definitely not unhappy. That darkness inside him flared with new warmth. He’d barely dared to entertain the idea of _keeping_ Loki, but in the darkest hours of the night, he’d dreamed, and it had been _stunning_. And he _wanted_. Wanted with a ferocious heat that surprised him.

Pepper turned into him, cupped his face in her hands to make sure he was paying attention. “We are.” She stated, as unyielding as if she were made of solid steel. “You want to. I know you do, Tony.” She informed him.

Tony nodded, throat dry. “Is it what you want?” He asked.

Pepper nodded, and when she spoke again, her tones were lighter, but no less dangerous than before, a fire burning behind her eyes to match the one raging in Tony’s chest. Only; her eyes were dark with it, fierce and destructive, where Tony wanted to _make_ and _remake_ and be unmade and moulded into something new. Something better. “What I really want, Tony,” She began, and Tony was already prepared to burn the world for her in that instant, if that was what she asked, “is Odin’s head on a stick.”

Understanding dawned with crystal clarity, and Tony nodded once, as sharp as an obsidian blade. He looked up and found that Loki had not gone too far, was still hovering nearby, lounging elegantly against a wall but taut as a bowstring underneath it all. Tony had known, somehow, that he would be there; watching. He met those green eyes, burning like copper salts, and nodded. He knew Pepper’s request was not for her. “Then you’ll have it;” he said to both of them, “whatever you want.”


End file.
